Planning Permission

Ann McKechin: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government whether (a) Ministers and (b) officials in his Department held discussions with stakeholders and business organisations prior to the introduction of the Non-domestic Self-funding Software Validation Service.

Andrew Stunell: The Department has held, and continues to hold, discussions with industry partners about how best to deliver, and maintain, the validation service for software developed by commercial practices for assessing the energy performance of non-domestic buildings. The changes to the Software Validation Service involved no regulatory changes that would, in the normal course of events, require a formal consultation process or impact assessment to be undertaken. However, we continue to hold discussions with industry partners in order to gain a full understanding of the impact of any changes and what more can be done to mitigate them.
	Since the announcement on 25 January, we have said that neither DCLG nor the operator of the energy performance certificate register will introduce any changes for the purposes of complying with Part L of the Building Regulations or for generating energy performance certificates and display energy certificates that would trigger the need for software for non-domestic buildings to undergo validation in 2012. The only exception to this is air conditioning software, which will need to undergo validation prior to the statutory requirement to lodge air conditioning reports onto the non-domestic energy performance certificate register coming into force in April. Air conditioning software providers were advised in October that central funding was no longer available for third party software validation, and that alternative arrangements would be introduced.